Preparing for the Redemption Rabbi Reuven Spolter

SPOLTER

Founder, Mishnah Project

Learning Taharot, Preparing for the Redemption

Thoughts gleaned from the Mishnah, studied as part of the global Mishnah Yomit program. This week’s Mishnayot: Kinnim 3:4 – Keilim 2:2

About fifteen years ago while on a tour of an area surrounding Jerusalem (before I made Aliyah), the tour guide stopped on the side of the road and led us into a cave. In that cave, he showed us a pile of small, round cylinders of stone, which were clearly hewn out of the rock. What, he asked us, do you think these are? (Take a look at the attached picture and guess for yourself).

After we offered several incorrect guesses, our guide explained that these stones were in fact garbage, the remnant insides of ancient cups hewn out of stone. We were in a quarry close to the Temple Mount where they prepared utensils for use in Jerusalem. Halachically, most utensils are mekabel tum’ah – susceptible to ritual impurity. Once Tamei, if used accidentally they would disqualify any food, including sacrifices, from being eaten. For this reason, many Kohanim would only use utensils that could not become Tamei at all. Unfortunately, the list of usable materials is quite short. The Gemara (see Shabbat 58a) tells us that, “Vessels of stone, of dung and of earth cannot receive Tum’ah – both according to Torah as well as rabbinic law.” Dung plates were out, as well as mud plates which probably didn’t hold up all that well. That left actual stoneware as the only realistic option left to the Kohanim.

Holding this artifact in my hand, I both marveled at the ability to literally hold a piece of history from the Second Temple, while shuddering at the thought of the challenge this piece of stone presented – and will one day (soon) present us as well.

In the Temple era, one not only had to worry about kashrut and Shabbat and all the myriad laws that guide and govern our daily lives. Our ancestors had an entire additional category of halachot that governed everything from the food they

ate to the houses in which they lived to the company they kept. Moreover, the forces governing this behavior were entirely invisible – attributes of ritual purity that cannot be measured, seen or perceived in any way (reminds us of how we think about COVID). When the Beit Hamikdash is rebuilt (speedily in our days), all of us – even the most religious among us – will need to learn and assimilate these complicated, intricate halachot into our daily lives.

When Mashiach comes the roads, trains and tunnels will already have been prepared to accommodate the masses of people who will flock to the Temple

These laws are indeed intricate and subtle, very much like the myriad laws of kashrut that most religious people have simply assimilated into their daily routine; what we can and cannot eat and when; where we purchase our food and with whom we break bread. All of us will become a kind of ba’alei Teshuvah, as we learn to navigate not only the offering of korbanot, but the requisite ritual purity required to offer those korbanot or visit the Beit Hamikdash. In most areas of halachah, centuries of study, application and debate have addressed, refined and clarified religious law. For example, the laws of Shabbat have been studied, applied, refined, defined and clarified for generations. When you study Shabbat in the Mishnah, you’re getting the basic building blocks of the laws of Shabbat as well as a broad understanding of halachic categories, but the halachah has been advancing for centuries.

Not so the laws of Taharot! The Tanaim living in the Beit Hamikdash era represent the last generation to debate and clarify the laws of ritual purity in a practical manner. With the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash, most of these laws (except as applied to Kohanim in some areas) became irrelevant to daily life. Aside from Masechet Niddah, we have no Talmud – neither Bavli nor Yerushalmi – on the entire order of Taharot! The study of Mishnah represents the most up-to-date study of many of these crucial concepts in Jewish law.

For reasons that are obvious, as Sedarim in Shas go, Taharot doesn’t get much love. As you walk by a set of Mishnah in shul or in your home, the volumes of

Taharot are always new and shiny from lack of use. Whenever there’s a request for the learning of Mishnayot for a loved one, Taharot are the last mishnayot to get taken. I get it. But…Taharot is a major part of Shas! (an entire Seder!) The Tanaim considered these laws fundamental in order to function as a practicing Jew. Even those unique people who have completed Daf Yomi cannot really say that they’ve completed Shas until they’ve studied Seder Taharot.

The other day, I was driving with my wife into Jerusalem from Yad Binyamin, and I pointed out the new tunnel entrance to Jerusalem currently under construction. My wife commented that she can literally see the preparations for the Redemption! When Mashiach comes the roads, trains and tunnels will already have been prepared to accommodate the masses of people who will flock to the Temple.

But will we be ready? Will we know how to act and what the halachah demands of us? We can only truly be ready if we take the time to study Seder Taharot.

This week, the Mishnah Yomit cycle began Seder Taharot. Studying two mishnayot each day will familiarize each student with core concepts crucial to this important area of ritual law.

And, it will bring each of us one step closer in our preparation for the Redemption.

Rabbi Reuven Spolter is the Founder of the Mishnah Project which spreads the study of Mishnah around the world.